Pharmacopoeias as witness of world history / George Urdang.

  • Urdang, George, 1882-1960.
Date:
[1900?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Pharmacopoeias as witness of world history / George Urdang. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Gerstein Science Information Centre at the University of Toronto, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Gerstein Science Information Centre, University of Toronto.

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    LIBRARY OF THI£ ONTARIO COLLEGE, ^ ^^ PHARMACY A^«fi2pf99f^il NOV 1951 itopocias as Witnesses of World History GEORGE URDANG* IT is not very likely that the members of the Florentine College of Physicians who at the end of the fifteenth century compiled a new- formulary, were aware of the fact that they were opening up a new era of European pharmacy. This modest compilation, published in 1498 under the title Nuovo Receptario, is considered the first European official pharma- copoeia, i.e., the first pharmaceutical standard adapted to the needs of a certain political unit and made obligatory for the physicians and pharma- cists of this unit by the authorities concerned. It took about half a century until the example of Florence was followed in the more or less sovereign German Imperial Free Cities of Nuremberg (Dispensatorium Pharmacopolarum . . . authore Valeria Cordo, 1546), Augs- burg (Enchiridion sive . . . dispensatorium . . . pro Reipub. Augstburgensis Pharmacopoeis, 1564) and Cologne (Dispensarium usuale pro pharmacopoeis inclytae Reipublicae Coloniensis^ ^S^S)-> ^^ the Spanish municipalities of Barcelona {Concordia Pharmacopolarum Barcinonensium, 1535) and Saragossa {Concordia Aromatariorum Civitatis Cesaraugustae)^^ and in the Italian duchy of Mantua {Antidotarium Mantuanum, i559)- It was for the sake of uniformity in the preparation of drugs and the adaptation of the formulas concerned to the special needs and resources of the political units involved that the official pharmacopoeias came into existence, and these reasons have undoubtedly remained predominant up to the present. Besides, however, we know that, for instance, the issuance of the Augsburg and Cologne standards so shortly after the appearance of the Nuremberg dispensatory was to a very great measure due to scientific emolument and difference of opinion as to the scope of a pharmacopoeia. That these incentives increased steadily in the course of time can easily be proved, and they were activated and given their opportunity by another and very potent factor: the rising nationalistic ideology. An own pharma- copoeia became gradually a matter of national ambition, a part and a proof * Director, Institute of the History of beit der Pharmazeuten, in: Die Vortrage der Pharmacy, Madison, Wisconsin. Hauptversammlung [Gesellscaft fiir Ge- ^ Rafael Folch y Andreu, Die prahispa- schichte der Pharmazie] in Basel [1934]. nischen offizinellen Pharmakopocn und die Mitar- Mittenwald, 1934, pp. 212-2 23. [46]